


forged in fire

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss of Parent(s), Oneshot, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 12:15:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4606431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fire is mythical. Fire signifies rebirth.</p><p>How Lael Lowrey becomes L.</p><p>Really small oneshot crossposted from tumblr. Not compliant with L FILE No. 15 (if anyone cares.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	forged in fire

He’s still on bed rest the first time Mr. Wammy comes to visit him. He doesn’t remember much about what happened, which bothers him, when normally, he remembers everything—now there’s so little. Loud noise, bright lights. An explosion. Fire. Heat and smoke. Mother crying. Father telling him to run. His lungs and throat aching like every breath was tearing them apart.

Silence, like suddenly falling asleep.

He’d woken up in a children’s hospital a week later with a tube in his throat and pastel curtains and beeping monitors and bright lights blurring around him. More importantly, he’d woken up an orphan.

It doesn’t quite sink in that his parents are dead until he talks to Mr. Wammy, though. He cries about it for a while before then, because he’s not sure what else to do and it’s so difficult to express things when his brain won’t make the thoughts come out in words—but it still doesn’t feel real. He can’t remember it, therefore it must not have happened.

“You must be young Mr. Lowrey.” The old man bows to him when he greets him, like he’s someone terribly important. “Lael Lowrey, yes?”

“Who are you?” His throat is still scratchy, but he’s still taking his medicines and they make it better, even if they make his brain feel fuzzy. “You’re not a doctor. You’re wearing a suit, and if you were a doctor… you wouldn’t need to ask my name…”

The boy coughs politely into his elbow, and the old man gives a good-natured smile.

“You’re correct. I’m not a doctor. I run a school, Lael. A school and a home—somewhere where you will be able to stay.”

_An orphanage._

* * *

Two weeks later, they’re not in a hospital room, but in the back of a black limousine, grey England skies passing by the windows. Two weeks, and little Lael Lowrey, eight years, three months and twenty-eight days old, had single-handedly facilitated the arrest of the men who had bombed his neighborhood in Winchester, along with several others before and since—the men who had killed his parents and twenty other people. The men who had had every intention of killing a large number of government officials in hopes of starting a war.

They nearly succeeded. 

Mr. Wammy had lived quite a long time already, but he had never yet seen anything like what that boy had done. He’d only been more insistent on giving the boy a place in his school, and just his luck—the child had finally accepted.

There had been only one thing remaining; with the case solved, the victims’ bodies had been released. Mr. Wammy paid for the boys’ parents’ funeral.

He had watched from a polite distance as the child had stood among the crowd, somber. He had watched as he’d carried two wreaths of flowers near as big as he was to put atop each coffin. He had seen, when no one else had, the tears that had streaked the boy’s cheeks before a late February shower had begun and hidden the evidence of the child’s humanity. They had driven away to the sound of the church bells.

At the gates to the orphanage, the boy takes hold of his sleeve, head hanging. Another church’s bells are ringing.

“Lael,” Mr. Wammy starts, voice bearing grandfatherly concern—but beneath it, a glint, a spark. The curiosity of an inventor who’s just seen something one of a kind. Yes, the boy must come to feel at home here. The world will be grateful for it.

“I don’t like that name anymore,” the child interrupts. The tears that don’t fall from his eyes instead ring out in his voice. “I don’t want you to call me that.”

He guides the boy through the courtyard, to the steps. “What shall I call you instead?”

A pause, then—

The boy holds out the hand that isn’t latched onto Mr. Wammy’s sleeve, forefinger and thumb straight in a right angle. “I will be L.”

The doors open, and the world changes.

* * *

Somewhere, in a respectable house in a Kanto residential neighborhood, at the very moment the future world’s greatest detective steps into his new existence, Light Yagami turns one year old.


End file.
